Pillow Talk
by Julia456
Summary: Because, no, there is absolutely not enough Josh/Kat fluffiness out there. And I should know.


Notes: This immediately follows Season Three's "Truth Be Told", in which Psycho blows up Team Steel's van and traps them underwater, etc. They're rescued off the coast of Fiji by an unidentified ship, which I've cast here as a Naval cruiser.

For UKHoneyB, who inspired me with the very funny hotel room/pillow scene in her story "The Sum of The Parts". Yes, fic: it's the gift that keeps on giving. :)

* * *

Kat had just started to fall asleep when someone knocked on the hotel room door. Knocked loudly. Insistently. In total defiance of the "Do Not Disturb" hanging from the doorknob.

At first she planned to glare at the door, put a pillow over her head, and go back to dreamland. But whoever it was wasn't stopping, and finally she hauled herself out of the bed, stormed across the room and undid the locks with a single goal: _This person is going to die._

"What?" she snarled at her unwanted visitor before she even recognized who it was.

It was Josh, standing in the hallway with a pillow and the portable transphasic generator under one arm. He was still wearing the shirt and sweatpants the sympathetic corpsman had given them that afternoon.

"Berto snores," he said helplessly.

Kat rubbed at her face. "Duh. That never bothered you in the van."

"In the van I had white noise headphones." Josh tapped a nanoprobe-enhanced ear with his free hand, giving her a pleading, _What can I do about _that expression that involved a lot of big brown puppy-dog eyes. "They don't work when they're in a million scorched pieces, you know."

Even though she really, really wanted to, she valiantly resisted the urge to point out that Josh and Berto sharing one of the hotel's two remaining rooms was completely Josh's idea. _Mr. Chivalry stabs himself in the foot; film at eleven_. "The concierge can't find a pair for you?"

He shrugged, clearly irritated with both Berto and the concierge. (Who was kind of a jerk, actually. It'd taken a call from Jeff and a direct infusion of major cash before the guy had allowed them to even get rooms in the first place.) "I'll sleep on the floor?"

She scowled at him for another moment, then reluctantly let him in and shut the door again. "Yes you will. Turn out the lights, okay?"

Kat went back to the bed - the huge, gloriously soft bed, with its delicious thousand-count Egyptian cotton sheets and honest-to-God feather pillows, the bed that skinny little bunk in the van could've only dreamed of being - and buried herself in it.

For the luxurious Fijian hotel bed alone, she was halfway glad Psycho had decided to detonate the van. She could almost be grateful, if the cyborg hadn't then, you know, tried to kill them all. Being left for dead on the ocean floor and oxygen-deprived really took a lot out of a girl.

Back to sinking into wonderful, wonderful sleep. But her plans were stymied yet again when Josh kept fumbling around, banging into stuff and making a whole lot of unnecessary noise. So she had to pick up her head and demand, "_What?_"

"I need to plug this in," he said, "but I can't find the right kind - hold up, there's one."

She craned her head up and saw that he was pointing at the outlet right next to the bed. "Good," she said, and pulled the pillow over her head.

"Uh," Josh said. "Yeah. I don't think there's another one. I guess I could go back and get the extension cord, but -"

From under the pillow she yelled, muffled, "Just get in the bed and _shut up!_"

"You sure?"

"YES! Now _let me sleep!_"

There was a pause and then he said, "Okay." And after a few more agonizing minutes of rustlings, beepings, and other assorted noises, the lights went out and she felt him climbing onto the other side of the mattress.

Kat took the pillow off her head and told him, "Hog the covers and you die," then - _at last_ - went to sleep.

At some point in the night, Kat came half-awake, wondering vaguely why she felt so warm. Then she realized it was because she was pretty much on top of Josh. _I should move, _she thought, fuzzy, _get back to my side_, but that seemed like an awful lot of work, considering.

Through mostly-closed eyes, she watched the generator casting softly pulsing green light against the walls and ceiling, and felt more than heard the slow, even breathing of her teammate. He was really warm. And smelled pretty good, too, for someone who'd spent most of the day trapped underwater or being debriefed on a Navy cruiser.

Before she could summon up the energy and motivation to put some distance between them, she slid back into sleep.

In the morning Kat opened her eyes and noticed, first of all, that her arm was numb because she'd been sleeping on top of it. Then she felt something brushing across the skin at her waist where her shirt had rucked up. It was warm and slightly rough. It tickled.

She shifted position to get away from it and realized that it was Josh's hand, and when she jerked her head around to glare at him, he had an expression of alarm. And embarrassment. But mostly alarm.

Even as she got angry she knew it wasn't something he'd done on purpose. He looked half-asleep (his hair was sticking up; hers probably was too) and besides, chances were good the World's Biggest Boy Scout would sooner die than get fresh with an unconscious woman.

But still.

"That tickles," she said, glaring. Before he could apologize, she grabbed the pillow and whapped it, hard, at his skull.

"Hey!" he said, grabbed his own pillow, and struck back.

And then it was _on_.

The pillow fight lasted until one of them unbalanced the other and sent both crashing to the floor. By then most of the pillows had been reduced to white fluffy feathers, which stuck to everything, especially hair. By then they were also laughing hard enough for tears, which made fighting kind of tough anyway.

"Truce," Josh said, flat on his back, holding his hands up, a feather stuck to his eyebrow. He was grinning.

Kat was grinning as well, but she made sure to knee him in the stomach as she got up. "Okay. Truce. You go wake up Berto, I'll get room service, and we'll never speak of this again."

"Sounds like a good deal to me," he said cheerfully.

It was, and they didn't... until the next time Team Steel found itself one hotel room short of three.

But that was a different story.

--end!--


End file.
